Have you ever wondered at your closing when you are signing papers to purchase a property, why your property is described in a funny way? You are in the process of buying a property, say 123 Main Street, Houston, Texas, and while some of your documents may show that address, most of the documents show something called “legal description” and instead of 123 Main Street, it says “RES B & D BLK 1 HOOPER WADE SURVEY” and you are thinking what the heck? Most people don’t pay attention and just sign. Curious or diligent people will ask, and closing agent says “that’s your legal description”, you nod and sign!
Wait! That was an important thing. That legal description defines the property you are actually buying. You may have no idea if its right or wrong, and you may be thinking surely the seller know what the legal description of the property is, so it must be right. What if it isn’t right? What if, it wasn’t BLK 1, but BLK 11? Whats the harm? We can always go back and fix it, right? So long as you got the possession, you don’t care, right? Sadly, that not how it works.
First, “legal description” is terribly important. Postal address is not a very reliable way of identifying property, for example, multiple properties may share the same address. Imagine if a close know family inherited a 10 acre plot at 123 Main Street, and all four children decided to build their homes, taking 2.5 acres each, and build 4 different homes on it. The need a legal description that uniquely identifies each property. Texas Supreme Court, in landmark case AIC Mgmt v. Crews took this issue up again in 2008 and ruled that a conveyance without a legal description is void. That’s right, if you didn’t have a legal description in your deed, its a worthless piece of paper. Not only you must have a legal description, it must be “sufficient”. Court was helpful in describing what sufficient legal description is.
The instrument must describe the property to be conveyed. “To be valid, a conveyance of real property must contain a sufficient description of the property to be conveyed.” AIC Mgmt. v. Crews, 246 S.W.3d 640, 645 (Tex. 2008). “A property description is sufficient if the writing furnishes within itself, or by reference to some other existing writing, the means or data by which the particular land to be conveyed may be identified with reasonable certainty.” Id. When a property conveyance fails to sufficiently describe the land being conveyed, the conveyance is void. Id
There are other cases that hold that it doesn’t matter if everyone in the room knew exactly what property is being conveyed. If the legal description did not sufficiently describe the property, conveyance is void.
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Sanjay R Chadha Law PLLC offers legal services to clients in India and USA. We have licensed attorneys in both countries with experience in business litigation, business transactions, technology and cybersecurity issues, contracts, administrative law and appellate law. We offer value centric services for our clients and also provide paymaster services for international transactions.